I had an interesting conversation this afternoon with a friend of mine who is currently working for me and we’re considering expanding his position and making it more of a full time role.

I have always loved working with family and friends and they have been my best source of help. I’ve had my sister working for me for over 3 years and have a joint venture with my father. I bought my office space with my mother and she uses one half of it. Also, most of my hires – for long term or short term projects – have all been friends that I’ve known for a while.

Here is why I love working with friends or family:

1) They Care

Friends and family don’t just think about themselves. They spend more time thinking about what you’re going through and how they can help the business. My team has had to stay late, take weekend time and work hard to finish projects on tight deadlines and they did so willingly because they wanted to see me succeed.

2) You Can Trust Them

Ever wonder if your staff is working hard when you’re not there? Are you able to give over responsibility of major projects to your team and trust that they will be able to perform? I’ve never had to worry about somebody not completing their tasks or following through on something they said they were going to do. As long as you treat them with respect and communicate they will grind tooth and nail to finish the project properly.

3) You Know What They Are Really Like

I’m not suggesting hiring all your friends. You know there are some people who work diligently and others who are slackers. You know who you could spend all night hanging out with and who you wouldn’t be able to stand for more than a couple of hours before they get on your nerves. In a job interview people are always on their best behavior so you can’t realy get to know them. You already know the true personalities of your friends and will be able to tell in advance if there is a potential to work together or not.

4) You Know What They Want

You never want to hire someone just because they need a job – regardless of if they are you friend or not. You always want people who are genuinely interested in the position you have available and want to learn from you. Think about your friends and family – do they ask about your business? Are they excited by it? If they’re not passionate about working in your business then don’t even think about hiring them.

5) They Will Tell You The Truth

Another great thing about friends and family is that they tell you the truth. Many employees are afraid of their boss and say things that they think he / she wants to hear. Nobody wants to hire “yes men” – people who only give you the good news and cover up the bad. Your friends and family know you and will be far more honest with important information which might be painful to hear but will only help grow your business.

6) They Are More Loyal

If you have a position where your friend or family member is genuinely involved in because you’ve followed the above steps then you’ll also have a much more loyal worker. You won’t have people taking other projects while at your office. They won’t leave the company at the first chance when someone comes and offers them higher pay. They’ll have your back and will be more committed to making your business a success than someone who you don’t have that kind of relationship with.

Considering all the above points, I’m also assuming that you are a fair boss and treat everyone with respect. If you’re a control freak who makes life hell for employees then you deserve to have them run out on you.

What do you think? Have you worked with friends or family? What was your experience?

Dave Thomas starred in 652 commercials for Wendy’s Old Fashioned Hamburgers, more than any other person in television history.

But, he wasn’t just that friendly face you saw on TV with his white shirts and red ties; Thomas built his multi-billion dollar fast-food restaurant chain from the ground up, earning him a reputation as one of the most successful and loved entrepreneurs in American history.

Thomas’ father once told him, “You’ll never keep a job! I’ll be supporting you for the rest of your life.”

From being an anonymous baby who was unwanted by his birth parents to becoming a multi-million dollar CEO, Thomas made the vision he outlined as a 15 year old come true.

Through a combination of hard work, desire and his unique personality, Thomas rose to the top of the food chain. What were his success factors?

“When I was eight years old, I dreamed that I would one day own the best restaurant in the world. My restaurant would serve great tasting hamburgers made just the way you like them, and all of the customers would love the food and come back again and again. – From a school essay he wrote at 15 yrs called “The Pursuit of happiness.” I thought if I owned a restaurant, I could eat for free.

Only in America would a guy like me, from humble beginnings and without a high school diploma become successful. America gave me a chance to life the life I want and work to make my dreams come true. We should never take our freedoms for granted, and we should seize every opportunity presented to us. 

What do you need to start a business? Three simple things: know your product better than anyone. Know your customer, and have a burning desire to succeed. Take care of your business and your business will take care of you.

It all comes back to the basic. Serve customers the best-tasting food at a good value in a clean, comfortable restaurant, and they’ll keep coming back. Anytime I had any doubts, you know what I would do? I’d have a double cheese with mustard, pickle and onion, a bowl of chili and a Frosty. And I’d say, ‘I know we can sell this. It’s fantastic.’

If we take care of our customers every day and exceed their expectations, we’ll earn their loyalty. It all comes back to the basics: serve customers the best tasting food at a good value in a clean, comfortable restaurant and they’ll keep coming back. 

Hard work is good for the soul, and it keeps you from feeling sorry for yourself because you don’t have time. I think the harder you work, the more luck you have. If you want it bad enough…and try hard enough…you can get it. You can make your dreams come true.

If there are things you don’t like in the world you grew up in, make your own life different. You can do what you want to do. You can be what you want to be. There’s no one to stop you but yourself. Believe in your dream. People may tell you that you won’t make it, that you’re wasting your time. If you keep your dream in mind, have done your research and are willing to work hard, you can make it come true.“

This week’s Entrepreneur University comes thanks to Mike Michalowicz who  is the author of The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur and has written two other posts for the Young Entrepreneur Blog.

Congratulations! Your company has officially turned a profit! What? You didn’t get the memo? You thought your business was months, years away from the blessed black? Whoa! You must be thrilled to get this news. You must feel like doing a little happy dance, maybe even hopping down to the corner store for a celebratory six-pack.

Hold on, bucko. You’ve got two teeny, tiny, no-big-deal steps to take before you can count your chickens, err, cash. It will take all of five minutes, I promise. And then you can call your Mom.

•    First, open an interest-bearing escrow account online, one that even the entire Ocean’s Eleven team can’t access. You’ve got to guard those pennies from that thief in your office – YOU.

•    Next, transfer 5% of your last deposit into the account. That’s it. You’re done. (Until your next deposit, that is.)

Yeah!!! Tell all your Facebook friends, write your hometown newspaper, and stop total strangers on the street. Your business just officially turned a profit!  And will do it CONSISTENTLY!

The simple truth about cultivating a profitable business is you already have a profitable business, you’re just putting the profit back in the pool to be spent on new desk chairs and late night pizza runs. You’ve got to take that profit FIRST and put it where the sun don’t shine – or in the bank. Whatever you prefer.

This system, what I refer to as the Profit First Account (PFA), allows you to make a profit off of every sale. Not bad. Not bad at all. I know, I know, you’re wondering how the heck you’re supposed to run your business when you’re skimming 5% off the top? Easy. You adjust.

Five percent is doable. After a few weeks, you won’t even notice. You will adjust your spending, planning, and even your thinking to accommodate the swelling profits in your PFA. You’ll forget about the things you thought you needed and make do with what you have. (Come on, do you really need all of those paper clips? Join Office Depot Anonymous and get on with your life!)

Better yet, you will come up with scathingly brilliant ideas about how to best use the remaining 95% of your inbound revenue. In fact, you may actually come up with a remarkable innovation, one that could, say, catapult your business into the stratosphere of success. Imagine that.

The cherry on top of the PFA? Every quarter you get to take some of the money out and distribute it – TO YOURSELF. Eventually you’ll increase your percentage, transferring 10%-20% of each deposit into your PFA (at my company, we take 20% of every deposit). Whoa! Now you’re turning a massive profit for every single sale, building a multi-million dollar business one deposit at a time. Nice.

So, are you ready to party? Or you do you need to wait a minute for that transfer to go through?

Congrats!

Today we passed the 1,000 RSS reader mark (officially at 1,019)! Thank you for reading our blog, subscribing and, of course, commenting and adding your thoughts to our posts! I wanted to celebrate today by highlighting some of the most popular posts that I’ve created as judged by the number of page views.

We only installed Google Analytics in November of 2007 so the following results showcase posts from November 2007 to yesterday:

Over 80,000 Page Views (we hit the 1st page of Digg with this post)

• The Top 10 Mistakes People Make When Starting A Business

5,000 – 10,000 Page Views

• Pursue Your Passion – Pierre Omidyar (founder of eBay)

2,500 – 5,000 Page Views

• Live With No Regrets – Jeff Bezos
• The 6 Common Mistakes Entrepreneurs Make – Entrepreneur University
• Color Your Call To Action
• How Dov Charney Started American Apparel
• Top 10 Movies For Entrepreneurs
• 30 Internet Millionaires Under 30
• 2008 Link Love

1,000 – 2,500  Page Views

• 7 Insanely Helpful Websites for Venture Start-Ups
• Business Savvy – Part 4
• How To Make Money With SecondLife
• Top Ways to Get a Fresh Business Idea Off the Ground
• Top The 21 Celebrity Entrepreneurs
• Think Big – Donald Trump
• Obama or McCain – Who is More Small Business Friendly?
• 5 Tips To Sell Online Advertising
• 11 Ways To Find Products To Sell On eBay – Entrepreneur University

Thank you again for your loyalty to our blog! I’m looking forward to continuing to provide valuable ideas and motivational posts to help you build and grow your business. Next step is 2,000!

The congressional defeat of the proposed bailout plan by the Treasury led to one of the worst stock market days in history.

The result was an elimination of trillions of dollars in shareholder wealth.

The main reasoning for the rejection of the plan was that ordinary taxpayers should not have to subsidize the fat cats over on Wall Street.

What are entrepreneurs saying about the bailout plan? Mark Cuban (one of the Top 25 Visionaries, and creator of the The Top 7 Rules For Startups) is an American entrepreneur worth about $2.8 billion.

He is also the owner of the Dallas Mavericks and writes the popular blog, Blog Maverick.

According to Cuban:

“The bailout will boost access to credit quickly to consumers with good credit. For those with less than good credit, it won’t flow for a while. This may actually force people to save and pay down their credit cards. That’s a good thing.

We not only need the bailout, but we need far better transparency and oversight than the current form of the bill offered. You’re going to have to bailout, you’re going to have to inject liquidity, you’re going to have to take the bad loans and all the bad instruments off people’s balance sheets.

If the big three banks – JPMorgan, Citibank and Bank of America – get it wrong because they are not under any more oversight than what got us into this mess in the first place then we may not know we have a disaster with them until it’s too late. They may be too big to bail out.”

What do you think the government should do? Is there a better way to increase accountability and rescue the troubled American financial industry?